Happy New Year

Happy New Year G Sakamoto and Family

These are difficult times. Uncertainties of job, home, retirement security weigh heavy on our lives. Our temple and its membership are not immune to these unsettling economic conditions. We too are swept up in the turmoil. With rising costs and static revenue our Board of Directors is working hard to chart a course through these circumstances.

As we encounter the difficulties of our time it maybe reassuring to see how we are not alone in facing challenges. Through the long history of the Hongwanji, followers of the Nembutsu teachings have gone through many cycles of hardship and prosperity.

Shinran was born in 1173 at the beginning of the Kamakura period, a time of great political and social upheaval. Japan was moving from an Imperial to a feudal government dominated by the samurai. In a few short years, from 1177 to 1185, Kyoto, the seat of the Imperial court and the cultural center of Japan, was nearly destroy by a fire in 1177, followed three years later by famine that killed so many people, bodies were stacked like cord wood in the streets and an earthquake in 1185 cause widespread death and destruction. The Buddhist hermit, Kamo no Chomei (1155-1216) reflecting on the uncertainties of his world recorded in the opening lines of his book Hojoki:

"[1] Though the river's current never fails, the water passing, moment by moment, is never the same. Where the current pools, bubbles form on the surface, bursting and disappearing as others rise to replace them, none lasting long. In this world, people and their dwelling places are like that, always changing.

[2] When you see the ridgepoles of the impressive houses in Heian-kyo competing to rise above one another--dwellings of people of high status or of low--they look like they might stand for generations, but when you inquire you discover there are very few still standing from ages past. Some may have burned down just last year, and been rebuilt since. Or a mansion may have disappeared, to be replaced by smaller houses. Things change in the lives of the people living in those houses, too. There may be just as many people, but in places where I might have known twenty or thirty people in my youth, I may only recognize one or two now. Some die in the morning; others are born in the evening. That's the way it is with the people of this world--they are like those bubbles floating on the water." http://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Hojoki.html

Shinran entered the priesthood at age nine as the famine was beginning to subside. Although, he may have been a member of the aristocracy, everyone in Kyoto must have been aware of what was happening around them. The fire of 1177 burned buildings of the Imperial Palace and perhaps a third of Kyoto was burnt to the ground.

The difficulties that Shinran faced do not lessen the effects of the hardships we experience today. It does however point to his understanding and appreciation of the nembutsu that lightened the burden of those difficulties. What was important came from something other than status or wealth or fame. These things were unreliable. Subject to deterioration and change. He sometimes still saw himself in the pursuit of fortune and fame. But in the nembutsu of Amida, these ambitions were simply expressions of un-enlightenment, already accepted in the Vow of Amida.

Absolutely affirmed. Simply as you are. The promise of Amida transforms the un-enlightened into enlightenment. In difficulties that strip away familiar circumstance we may discover something important that runs deep and boundless in our lives.

In this new year we truly wish each of you a Happy New Year!